


별들의 불꽃놀이

by ideare



Category: EXO (Band), Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 04:39:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7962799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideare/pseuds/ideare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembers an obscene pile of money, the smell of gasoline lingering on his hands, and the warmth of a roaring fire lighting up the dark grounds like a lighthouse beacon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	별들의 불꽃놀이

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluedreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/gifts).
  * Inspired by [내 우주는 전부 너야](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5477846) by [breathechoes (bluedreaming)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/breathechoes), [kaithartic (bluedreaming)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/kaithartic). 



> title from [Love Me Right](https://youtu.be/RuqaVryDRd0) by EXO.

_I am supposed to be_  
_King of a kingdom or swinging on a swing_  
_Something happened to my imagination_  
_This situation's becoming dire_  
_My tree house is on fire_  
_And for some reason I smell gas on my hands_  
_This is not what I had planned_  
_This is not what I had planned._  
_—[Twenty One Pilots](https://youtu.Be/5dayd91k4ws)_  


  
**Thursday 5:32 a.m.**  
  
Junmyeon leans against the hood of his '57 Pontiac Star Chief, his Wayfarers on the tip of his nose, so as not to press against his bruised eye. He is waiting outside Kai's Garage. (No one really knows who Kai is, but the sign has been there since Junmyeon's grandparents were kids.) The red paint of the stylized writing is faded and chipped now, partly from age but mostly from the onslaught of rain they'd had this past month.  
  
Junmyeon watches as a blush of peach slashes against the pale grey sky.  
  
Jongin appears right on time, panting slightly as he makes his way over the hill. Before he left school, Jongin had been on the rugby team with Junmyeon, and they'd both run this route through Jongin's neighbourhood, one that looped through back alleys and unlit greenways so Jongin could run past his family's garage, making sure that all was in order before the rest of the world woke up. Jongin slows down when he sees Junmyeon, who pushes his sunglasses further up his nose before straightening up.  
  
As complicated as their physical relationship had been, there was never any preamble between these two when it came to speaking.  
  
"Fix my car for me?" Junmyeon asks with a grin as Jongin comes closer, angling away from him and heading towards the car.  
  
"It's going to take at least a couple hundred to fix this." Jongin frowns as his fingers trace over the deep slope of the dent. In the pink glow of sunrise, Jongin can see smashed glass glittering everywhere like stars, and yet none of the windows are damaged. The dark canvas is torn, sharp metal sticking out from the side, shining like a shooting star surrounded by the midnight blue body of the car. Junmyeon watches tensely as Jongin checks out the car.  
  
"Actually, I was hoping that you would do it for free. For old time's sake." Junmyeon doesn't expect this line of approach to work, especially with how things ended, but he figures that he should at least try. After all, Jongin does kind of owe him.  
  
The glare Jongin shoots him reminds Junmyeon of all those times on the field, right before Jongin took advantage of their opponent's misstep. Jongin re-examines the car, walking carefully around it. "I do nothing for free. So, what are you offering?"  
  
"Two packs of smokes?" Junmyeon doesn't smoke, but he discovered years ago that you can get a lot more with a pack of smokes and an offer of a light than you can with sweet talk and coercion. (It's prison rules and he's never been — never known anyone who has — but he can play by them.)  
  
Jongin stops and looks up at him. "What else?"  
  
"What else do you want?"  
  
Jongin doesn't even pretend to mull it over, "Soojung's number. And a good word put in from Joohyun." He adds the last part a beat too late to be part of his original request, but Junmyeon readily agrees to it.  
  
  
  
  
**Friday 3:23 a.m.**  
  
The money is piled up high, a little mountain in the middle of all that gravel. Junmyeon doesn't think much of it, doesn't think about how it could easily pay for bills and groceries of a neighbourhood for over a year, or how the serial numbers on the notes line up in perfect sequential order.  
  
Standing on top of the pile, an almost empty gas can dangling from his fingertips, he looks out at the nothingness surrounding him. Somewhere in all that darkness, his Pontiac sits camouflaged in the night.  
  
He pours out the rest of the liquid, careless and quick, before sliding down one side of the pile, soaked paper slipping under his feet. He takes off his gloves before reaching into his pocket for the wad of cash his father had given him as compensation for being his son, and pulls out his lighter. When the wad is barely lit, he chucks the entire bundle onto the pile and watches as the blue flames race around the pile, paving the path for the rest of the fire to follow.  
  
He steps backwards, slowly, enjoying the view of the pile of money as it burns to the ground.  
  
  
  
  
**Friday 8:54 p.m.**  
  
As they drive through the night, Joohyun's head is tilted back, with her hair streaming like a banner in the wind, and her arms stretched high above her, her fingertips pushing through the air as it rushes pass.  
  
Joohyun is in her own little world, wrapped up in the sensations of the night. And even though she is sitting right next to him, Junmyeon can feel the distance between them widening. He wants to pull her back to him, away from the hidden stars and all the promises they hold.  
  
"Are you okay?" Junmyeon asks, looking over at her. His Wayfarers mirror the streetlights zooming past, and there Joohyun sits, illuminated right at the heart of his own private galaxy.  
  
"I'm with you," she reassures him, a promise that she can both enjoy this moment privately while still sharing this memory with him. Her fingers creep across the gear shaft to tangle with his, her hand cold from the wind. Her icy touch is just another startling difference between them: she doesn't let things affect her for long, whereas Junmyeon is always just about to boil over, letting things settle until he pushes back against the world.  
  
(He remembers an obscene pile of money, the smell of gasoline lingering on his hands, and the warmth of a roaring fire lighting up the dark grounds like a lighthouse beacon.)  
  
  
  
  
_You wanted happiness, I can't blame you for that,_  
_and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy_  
_but tell me_  
_you love this, tell me you're not miserable._  
_—[Richard Siken](http://www.Goodreads.Com/quotes/657350-you-wanted-happiness-i-can-t-blame-you-for-that-and)_  
  
  
  
  
**Friday 9:31 p.m.**  
  
The party is loud, litter decorating the lawn like modern art. Two figures are stooped over the railing, smoking on an upstairs balcony, silhouetted by the light from the open windows. Their faces are smudged by the smoke, grotesque paintings left out in the rain, but Junmyeon can tell from the fuchsia pink hair on one and the windswept hairstyle on the other that the figures are Soojung and Jongin.  
  
On the ground floor, there are people doing a dance in canon, their flailing forms paying tribute to Dionysus in the halos of the light from the windows.  
  
The music is loud, enveloping them from all sides, and it feels like he is floating through sound, ready to drown in the bass of the subwoofers as it vibrates the ground around them. Junmyeon grips Joohyun's hand just that little bit tighter; she is the only thing that is grounding him. He ignores the cup at the door, but accepts the tiny blue pill, surreptitiously dropping it into his mouth as they make their way further in.  
  
Junmyeon's blond hair shines in the strobe lights, everything moving in stop-motion as the pill stokes the fire inside him, making him feel like he's dreaming of walking through the heart of the sun. For now, there is no pain, but his heartbeat is erratic, stuttering with the lights so that he's not sure if his heart has skipped a beat because of Joohyun's whispered "I love you," in his ear or because it's already beating out of sync.  
  
Still, he pulls her close for a moment, an arm wrapped around her waist, fingers caught in the red of her dress. She is real, she is here with him and none of this is a dream. She is cool against the fire simmering within him. (Maybe there's a fire in her too, but she knows how to cool it before it ever reaches the surface.) Her breath tickles his skin, cold, even in proximity.  
  
"I know," he whispers back. He can see her eyes searching for his own beneath his dark glasses. He sees her expression, aloof yet comforting, all set to douse the fire within that threatens to consume him whole. But he's not ready for that yet.  
  
He feeds off her love and still doesn't give anything back. He wonders how long it will be until she stops loving him. Surely, there is only a finite amount of time one can say _I love you_ without hearing it back before that love begins to end?  
  
  
  
  
**Saturday 1:50 a.m.**  
  
The stars are bright now, milky way arching overhead as they speed down the highway, only the occasional lights red-shifting away in the opposite direction when he looks through the rear-view mirror. Junmyeon speeds up, hoping to burn out the fire simmering inside him before he goes home again, to more of the same. (Just the thought of home makes him press down harder on the accelerator.) He relishes the speed, the way everything is left behind.  
  
"Faster," she says, grinning, and he is only too happy to oblige. He pushes the accelerator to the floor of the car as their mouths meet, heart-shaped for a moment, pink and red before he licks into her mouth, moonlight playing over their skin behind the windscreen.  
  
As soon as they pull away he needs to hear that reassurance: the confirmation that this is real, that she is here with him, that he is loved.  
  
"Do you love me?" he whispers into her hair as she pulls even further away, trailing an arm outside the car.  
  
"Maybe," she says, bringing her arm back inside. It's the first time that she hasn't promised him forever in her presence and declarations of love.  
  
The steering wheel is gripped tight in his hand like a second lifeline as all the pain he has kept at bay until now engulfs him. Junmyeon can feel his heart burning as the fire inside him finally consumes the one thing that Joohyun had kept safe and cool. He can already feel everything coming to an end. He supposes that forever is subjective and love is a fluctuating emotion that isn't always present.  
  
She fiddles with the Yashica as she gets ready to snap a picture of the both of them, Junmyeon looking at her as she looks at the shutter, neither of them watching the road.  
  
  
  
  
_Thus I suffer love's inconstancies_  
_And when I think the pain is most intense_  
_Without thinking, it is gone again._  
_—[Louise Labe](https://allpoetry.Com/poem/8526977-i-live--i-die--i-burn--i-drown-by-louise-labe)_


End file.
